


Find Me In the World

by Areiton



Series: Find Me In the World [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Creeper Derek Hale, Declarations Of Love, Derek Hale Deserves Nice Things, Derek-centric, First Kiss, Future Fic, Getting Together, Healthy Relationships, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Protective Derek, Puzzles, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is John, Slow Burn, Stiles-centric, Stilinski Family Feels, Wood Working, pesudo-alpha Derek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2019-03-16 11:18:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13635213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Areiton/pseuds/Areiton
Summary: Six years after he leaves Beacon Hills--eight after Derek drives out of his life for good--Stiles Stilinski is happy. Healthy. Maybe a little lonely, but he'shappyBut he sees Derek, sometimes, when he looks around the world, when he sees the full moon shining.Four hundred miles away, it turns out, Derek sees him too.





	Find Me In the World

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Español available: [Encuéntrame En El Mundo](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14103138) by [Lostwolfofwinter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lostwolfofwinter/pseuds/Lostwolfofwinter)



> This is a compilation of the series, for your convenience. Read separately or in one go. <3
> 
> [Translated in Spanish here!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14103138)
> 
>  
> 
> Couple notes:  
> Derek is an omega. He does not have alpha powers, despite being viewed as their alpha by the omegas he adopts.  
> This is a slow build thing.  
> This takes place over a span of about three years.

**the moon reminded me of you**

 

It had been six years since he graduated and eight since Derek Hale climbed in Braeden’s truck and drove out of his life for good.

At this point,  he’d been gone from Stiles life longer than he’d been in it, a dubious honor he shared with Claudia and it made Stiles wonder sometimes, why he gave so much emotion and feelings to people who weren't there.

He left Beacon Hills after the Wild Hunt. He left the pack, left the problems and the death and the whole mess of it and sometimes he felt guilty about that but he was watching the supernatural kill him, watching it kill his _father,_ and he couldn't stay. So they packed up their little house of memories and left and he never looked back. Peter texted him a few months after they left, a strangely pleased, _I'm glad you’re gone. Be safe, Stiles._

He wondered if Derek got the same odd blessing after he ran.

He heard, later, that Scott was killed by a woman named Monroe. He wept for days and drank for months, after that, and almost-- _almost_ \--went back, stopped only by his father's terrified eyes.

It took years to let go of the fear, to let go of the supernatural--to not enter a room and assess it for threats, to stop looking for the exits and creating emergency plans, to go out without a baggy of mountain ash.

It took a lot of therapy.

He felt like a survivor of a war, and carried the guilt of that because he knew the pack was decimated after Scott fell.

A wolf pack without an alpha, how could it not be? Especially with the pups so young.

He felt like the walking wounded.

His therapist said he had PTSD, which felt like the biggest _duh_ since he told Scott he was cursed.

But he got by. He got a job and he functioned. He dated, though it never felt _right_ or lasted long. He spent weekends with his dad and reading and sometimes he gardened. He learned to walk in the woods without flinching, and took up jogging.

His life was simple and quiet and safe and he wanted it that way.

Sometimes, he would realize he had gone a month or two without thinking about Scott or the others and he always crashed, a spiral of guilt and depression that spent him crawling into his bed for days. He heard his roof creak and resisted the urge to look for a lurking man in a leather jacket.

But on nights like this, he thought of Derek.

When he glanced up, instinctive even all these years later, to gauge the moon and saw it bright and fat and close.

The wolf moon, he remembered. This month was the supermoon and the Wolf moon.

And, as it always was, his thoughts were tugged inexplicably to the werewolf who got out, who shook off the black hole that was Beacon Hills.

He hated Derek for that,  when he first left. Now he's just grateful that somewhere, somewhere in this big wide world, Derek Hale ran free and happy under the bright light of the moon.

He unlocked his door and whispered to the moon, “Be good to him.”

Above him, the roof creaked a comforting response.

 

 

**i saw you in the dawn**

 

Life is quiet.

There was the few years after he left Beacon Hills for the last time, when he and Braeden were trying to figure out what the hell they were doing before they decided sex just complicated things.

He wanted more than she could give and was too damn broken for the things she _could_ give.

But she was steady and reminded him of Laura and he stayed with her, for a while. Hunted for money and sometimes because it was the right thing to do. Until he got tired of it, his hands being covered in blood and the scent of gunpowder and wolfsbane in his nose.

Braeden smiled at him when he left and promised to call and he was mildly surprised when she actually did.

He rented a little house in Maine, far enough in the woods that he was never bothered and started woodworking again, a skill he had picked up with his father and never quite shook the love of. It took three years to build the cabin on a nearby plot of property and he found two omegas in those years, formed an Alpha-less pack that felt more like family than he had any right to.

He heals. With wood under his hands, shaped into something good and solid and real, something he creates instead of destroyed, he heals.

Sometimes--not often, but occasionally--he thinks about them, the scattered pack led by Scott that he left behind. He heard about Scott’s death, felt it like a lost limb, a phantom ache that itched sometimes, when he least expected it.

He thought of Stiles, more than he expected. Derek heard he got out, took his father and ran after something bad that Peter refused to talk about, and it settled a low ache in his chest, knowing that Stiles was away from Beacon Hills, away from the constant draw of hellfire and monsters.

Life moved around him and he spoke of Laura, and realized that it didn’t hurt, not the same sharp burning that he felt those first few years and he wondered if Stiles ever got to the point where he could mention his mother and not ache with it.

He wondered if Stiles found someone to share that with.

Derek watched his pack of omegas grow and fall in love and marry, endured the quiet stares and well-intentioned introductions, but it never felt _right._ It never lasted.

Braeden smiled at him, when she visited every few years, like she knew the truth--that he loved a boy he left behind, that he loved him enough to let him go.

Derek ran sometimes, not for his life, not to kill some monster in his woods, but simply because he was a wolf and it sang in his blood, and the wind rustling through his fur made him feel closer to the boy he would never have.

Once, he went to Boston to discuss distribution of his furniture in a chain of small specialty stores, and he caught Stiles’ familiar scent on the streets, faded but layered deep on the streets and in bookstores and he smiled to himself as he followed that sweet familiar scent through a city he didn’t know until he stood in front of a small, cozy house, and heard the too-fast heartbeat that resonated in his dreams, sometimes.

He stood there, listening, until the dawn began to break, and then he shifted and ran.

He dreamt about it, sometimes, that stolen night and glimpses of Stiles’ stolen through open windows, and he would run through his familiar forest and sing to the moon until the sun rose and he went home, to the place where Stiles wasn’t, where he might never be.

Somewhere, Stiles was safe and happy and rising to greet the sun and Derek, for the first time in his life, was content.

 

**traces in the sunlight**

 

John buys a rocking chair.

It startles Stiles, because they’d never had one--well, no that’s not true. They did. But it vanished in the whiskey soaked weeks after his mother died, along with other things that he doesn’t think about much, because it’s easier to ignore those weeks.

It still hurts, when he thinks of his mother, and he realizes now that it will always hurt, but it’s not the sharp stabbing hurt it used to be. It’s familiar, a bruise like ache that won’t ever heal, but he has learned to live with.

The chair, though. That’s new.

His dad doesn’t bring it up and Stiles watches it, sidelong, stolen glances, like it’s something secret and forbidden, that he shouldn’t look at.

Its a chair, a rocking chair, not a national secret.

He laughs at himself, and promises next time he’s there, he’ll sit in the damn thing.

But he doesn’t. It lurks on the edge of his visits, but he never does address it with his dad, and he never goes to investigate it, just strokes his hand over the tarnished, almost burnt looking wood as he slips in and out.

Which is why he’s so startled when his father pulls to  a stop in front of a small, artisan furniture store. He arches an eyebrow at his father. The furniture store is one he’s walked past, a hundred times, going to the bookstore and the cafe, and that little vegan bistro where he let his dad order anything he wanted.

But he’d never been here.

“I ordered an ottoman for my rocker,” John says, and Stiles huffs a sigh, pushing out of the car and following his father into the store.

It was a good month, Stiles thought, his heart pounding in his throat. It was quiet and he hadn’t thought of Derek more than normal, hadn’t worried about the people he didn’t save, had only woken up screaming once this week.

It was a good month, and he had built a good life.

If anyone asked--no one did--he would have said he was happy. Lonely, sometimes. But happy.

But he stood in the little furniture store as his father talked to the clerk about an ottoman of all fucking things, and his gaze is locked on the triskle burnt into a large plaque  on the east wall.

The furniture is gorgeous. Strong but almost ridiculously pretty, battered but still shining. There was a rustic, useful, elegant feel to the sweep of the wood, the curve of the handles, the deep arches of the rockers. They gleam in the sunlight pouring through the front windows, and he feels like a piece of him that fits _wrong_ slides into place, finally.

He stares at it, head on and he can feel his pulse pounding, his mouth dry and he has the absurd thought that he had always known it would come to this.

“Is he here?” he asks, as his father flanks him.

John shakes his head. “No. I just--I found it by accident, Stiles.”

Stiles nods his head, absently. It makes sense. Derek had always been inevitable, he thinks.

“He comes by, every few months. To deliver new pieces.”

It’s offered hesitantly, and Stiles closes his eyes.

Because there’s something else he can see in that furniture, the sturdy build of it. Something he thinks only a person who _knows_ Derek could see.

He’s happy.

He’s happy and healthy, finally.

Stiles buys a rocking chair for his porch, and a small tree whittled out of wood, delicate and surprisingly sturdy and, he almost sobs when the clerk tells him, a hidden puzzle.

He takes it home, and he shuts the door and cries himself to sleep, but the tears aren’t bitter and burn against his skin with regret and lost opportunities.

When he wakes, he feels hollowed out, trembly on his legs as he walks downstairs. It’s absurd, he thinks, as he sits in the chair in the warm sunlight, curling up like he did when he was a small child in his mother’s lap.

He feels closer to Derek than he has in years.

 

**riddles in the morning**

 

“Do you do custom work?”

Derek hesitated. The whole trip to Boston was _different_ this month, an odd dissonance to the drive down, to the shop itself.

It smells, faintly, of Stiles, a familiar warm apple pie spice that curls in his sense and leaves him just a little off balance.

He’s scented Stiles here, in the streets of Boston, but never _here_ in the shop he’s come to think of as his.

Stiles scent is faint but presence, and it lingers over the wood of his pieces, the furniture that hasn’t sold.

He blinks. “What kind of custom work?”

Davis hands him a slip of paper and Derek glances at it, just briefly, before he pockets it and finishes his delivery.

“About the job?” Davis says.

Derek shrugs, “I’ll let you know next time.”

When he gets home, he hides from his pack, shifts and vanishes into the woods.

Lily found him, when the sun had fallen, shifted into her beta form, eyes glowing golden and sad. She didn’t say anything to Derek, and he didn’t offer an explanation, just whined softly when she curled around him and let the night slip past.

It took him two weeks of quiet withdrawal and being watched with increasing distress by his pack, before they break down and Braeden shows up at his cabin.

He blinks at her, too tired and conflicted to even be surprised and she nods, as if to herself. “You saw him, didn’t you?”

Derek sighs and pulls out the slip of paper, the one that is wrinkled and folded, the faint scent of Stiles long faded, and she reads it, a tiny smile on her lips when she looks up at him.

“Well. What are you gonna do?”

He doesn’t know.

The note--the request--it’s an invitation. And he knows Stiles, or did, once, and he knows if he doesn’t respond, Stiles will respect it, will never reach out to him again.

He knows that it’s enough, for Stiles, knowing he’s healthy and alive. It reminds him of that night, stolen on the streets of Boston, watching Stiles live his life from the dark, and content because Stiles was _happy_.

“You’ve always loved that kid, Der.” Braeden says, softly, and Derek shrugs.

“It would never have worked, then.”

“No,” she agrees, readily, “But what about now? You’re not the same person who left Beacon Hills.”

Derek looks at her, then, his gaze haunted. “I’m not. What if--”

Braeden smiles. “That boy looked at you like you hung the moon. You’ve changed--hell, he’s changed. But he’ll still love you.”

Derek stares at her, and nods.

The next day, he leaves her there, in his cabin, where his pack is sleeping, and wanders into the woods. He doesn’t know, exactly, what he is looking for, but he thought he’d recognize it when he saw it.

He rubbed Stiles note between his fingers and let a tiny smile curl up his lips as he walked through the morning.

_I’ve always been fond of puzzles. The tree reminded me of a time in my life I don’t like thinking about, but the puzzle kept me entranced, for hours._

_If you would like--but only if you want something like this, want to create this--I would very much like a new puzzle, maybe something I can carry into the future, same as the tree belongs to my past._

 

**whispers in the rain**

 

He listens to the rain.

His mother told him, once, when he was a little boy and curled in her lap with a cup of cocoa and the unshakable belief that nothing in life would ever go wrong--she told him that there were secrets, in the rain. Waiting to be found, if he was very quiet and listened.

Stiles had never been good at being quiet, and even less good at waiting.

But in the weeks and months after he left his note with Davis, he thinks it’s easier.

He catches sight of himself, smiling in a mirror, and he rubs his lips because that is such a strange expression to see on his face now.

He’s happy, here, he is. Happier than he thought he’d ever be.

This is different. A deeper, more settled peace that makes it easy to smile, that makes the nightmares push back for long deep nights of sleep, and afternoons in Derek’s chair, listening to the rain.

The thing is--he has no idea what Derek will do. If he’ll ignore the note, or if he’ll hunt Stiles down and demand he stay out of his life.

He doesn’t know if he’ll even _see_ Derek, or if all he’ll have is a few puzzles and this ridiculously comfortable chair.

And he’s ok with that.

He’s happy.

His dad watches him, and says, “Do you ever wish you’d done it different?”

“I think about it.”

How could he not? He left a war, ran like hell the first chance he got, and never looked back. There were casualties to that kind of thing.

“And?”

“And we do the best we can. I’d be dead if we hadn’t left, and you probably would be too,” he pauses, breathes through that idea, the knowledge that his father would have died there.

“I miss it, sometimes,” he confesses and John nods.

Stiles was an adrenaline junkie and insatiably curious, and desperate to be needed. It’s what kept him together, when his mother died and John needed him.

It’s what kept him functioning when they left Beacon Hills and he was reeling.

“I dream about it, sometimes. Not the nights we almost died, but the good times. The summer I spent with Derek and Isaac, looking for Erica and Boyd. Practicing with Scott. The weekend binges with Lydia.”

“Not all of it was bad,” John admits, and Stiles wipes at his eyes and nods. “Do you think if you and Derek reconnect, you’ll be drawn back into it all?”

And that’s the question, isn’t it? Even if Derek comes to find him, even if they reconnect personally and not through some gorgeous pieces of wood--what did that mean?

Is that even what he wanted?

Derek had been gone from his life for so long, and even when he was absent, he was there, a hollowed out space that he’d never been able to fill and eventually quit trying. It was like Scott--impossible to replicate, impossible to replace.

But Scott was gone, and Stiles had left him first. Derek was gone, by his own choice, and even if they had a chance to change that now--did he want to?

Did he want to step back into the inbetween world where monsters were real and death was a constant threat?

Was that even the life Derek led?

“I don’t know.”

“Well,” John says, sighing as he stands and claps Stiles on the shoulder. “You don’t have to decide yet.”

He leaned back into his chair, and held his cocoa under his nose and listened to the rain, a quiet whisper that seemed to repeat.

_Soon. Soon. Soon._

He closed his eyes and smiled and waited, still and quiet and patient.

 

**scents of home & fire**

 

He works on it at night.

When the pack has wandered away to their homes, and the moonlight and sighing wind are all to keep him company and the fire  in his fireplace crackles cheerfully at him.

He thinks it’s strange, that he is so comfortable with fire, now. His therapist, in the days when he still saw her, told him that it was healthy--that reclaiming the things he once feared was good for him.

And there was a time when fire, burning warm and bright in the family room, meant good things. Mean that his sisters were close and his parents were happy and his pack was safe. Meant long winter nights and hot cocoa and laughter.

She stole that, with so much else, for a long time, and he wouldn’t ever get his family back, but he built a fireplace in the cabin and Lily smiled, the first time he lit it, held his hand when he shook and Eric watched with wide eyes.

He sits in front of the fire and he whittles and carefully cuts.

The invitation--it _was_ an invitation--sits on next to him, worn from his fingers touching it, rubbing over Stiles’ words, and he glances at it, sometimes, when he’s working.

The puzzle is made of two pieces of wood--oak and cedar, and they are fragrant and familiar as he works, filling up his senses, soft compared to the sharpness of the smoke.

When he first brought them back, Braeden had looked at te two pieces of wood and lifted a single eyebrow. One--the cedar--was young and almost green, bendable if he was careful, still bearing traces of sap that made his fingers stick.

The oak--oh the oak. It was a thick solid piece he’d carved from the middle of a fallen tree--new growth on a tree that had died. It smelled, faintly, of rot and decay, but it was still faint, just the traces of the thing he had pulled it from.

Braeden looked at the pieces in his hand and smiled, that cryptic mysterious smirk of hers, and then kissed his cheek and slipped away again.

They didn’t fit together well, and he knew it. The wood grain clashed, the colors didn’t match, even the scents of them were strange together.

But the more he worked the wood, carving and fitting the pieces together, creating a picture he couldn’t quite describe, the more sense they made.

The cedar bent and gave and fit around the solid oak, filled up the space the oak left and he sighed a little, every time a piece of the puzzle fit together.

Lily asked about it. The others didn’t, but Lily had always been the loudest of the omegas he had gathered into a pack, and he expected it, her leaning into his space and asking about the scent of oak and cedar on his hands.

“Is it for him?” she asked, and Derek glanced at her.

He didn’t talk about Stiles. Not often. Only when his wayward omega got him very drunk, and coaxed out bits and pieces of his past.

“It’s--” he sighed and she leaned against him, pressing familiar and comforting.

“Do you miss Beacon Hills?” she asks, and he glances at it, at the little puzzle box that is finished now, and shakes his head.

It’s not Beacon Hills. It’s never been Beacon Hills. He only ever was drawn there by someone he loved--Laura first, and then Stiles.

It was always Stiles who pulled him back.

He wonders what it means, that Stiles is doing the same thing now. Reaching out with tentative hands, across the years and miles that separate them and offering that thing he’s always offered Derek.

Himself.

Or maybe all he wants is a damn puzzle.

He never could tell with Stiles.

“Not Beacon Hills,” he says, quietly, and touches a finger to the box, aware of his omega watching him.

“But I have missed him.”

 

**call me in the afternoon**

 

The first time his phone rings, he ignores the call. He doesn’t answer numbers he doesn’t know, not anymore.

The second time it rings, he kind of studies it and something makes him pick it up.

“Mr. Stilinski. The piece you ordered from Triskle Wood has been delivered.”

And he stops.

He’s in the middle of his office, and his assistant is talking to him. The sun is shining and there’s a list of things demanding his attention and his father left a text for him that he hasn’t read. And he can’t move.

Derek was here and he _responded_. After almost four months of waiting and wondering and wondering what the hell he’d do when--if--this moment came.

Derek was here.

He mumbles something, an excuse that amounts to nothing, and stumbles out of the office.

There are clients waiting, and his boss will probably be pissed but that’s a problem for another day. Right now, he leans into the steering wheel of his stupidly practical car and breathes until the tightness in his gut slows and breathing doesn’t feel like an impossibility.

He texts his father, and then drives to the little furniture boutique.

It doesn’t look different, but it _feels_ different as he steps inside, the air crackling with something intangible.

Davis looks at him and he smiles.

It doesn’t take much--a few minutes and a ridiculously low price that Stiles suspects is merely because of the Davis and he steals glances at the new rockers, the sturdy side table. There’s a bookcase, thick and lovely, three sturdy shelves with the distinct triskle inlaid into shelves and the phases of the moon carved in the intricate woodwork.

“I want that,” he says, impulsively and Davis’ eyebrows go up. Stiles flushes, and says firmly, “How much?”

“The artist asked anything you wish to purchase be sold at cost.”

Stiles doesn’t react to that, and Davis smiles. “Will Saturday be good for delivery?”

 

He doesn’t let himself look until he’s home, after he’s had a beer and called his dad to tell him he’s fine.

His hands shake when he opens the giftbox. It’s durable and has Derek’s distinct triskle on it, and Stiles strokes his fingers along the curves and arches of the black spiral, instantly familiar.

He remembers Derek explaining it’s meaning to Liam, a lifetime ago, in the back of a van when he thought they’d all die.

He remembers the curves of it on Derek’s trembling wet skin, the night Jackson trapped them in the pool.

He remembers seeing it in pictures and on walls, a repeated symbol in Beacon Hills that at first meant something to fear, and then--somehow, impossibly--became something to protect.

And now, as he smooths his fingers over it, his heart pounds with that familiar fear and excitement that he hasn’t felt, not like this, not since Beacon Hills.

For a moment, that thought terrifies him and he almost pushes it away.

Almost stands and bolts, because he’s done it before, he ran six years ago and left everything behind and he is finally, _finally_ happy.

And Derek doesn’t belong here.

But then--Derek never did quite belong in Beacon Hills either, and maybe that was the draw. He was a puzzle and Stiles had never been able to resist puzzles.

He opens the giftbox and grins.

 

**half moon musings**

 

There is a part of him--a big part--that wants to bolt. Wants to drop off the furniture and puzzlebox and climb right back into his truck and drive the four hundred miles back to Maine. Back to his tiny cabin and his pack that isn’t and the life he’s built that’s safe.

He wants to so badly his bones ache with the urge to shift and his gums itch with, his control frayed.

He wants to run, and he forces himself into the hotel he always stays at, because winter is closing in on them, and he needs to stock the cabin before he sequesters himself there, for months on end.

While he follows Lily around Boston and hums agreement to everything she says the pack needs, he doesn't think. He can push it out of his mind and be present, be what his pack needs and it’s enough.

But then.

Then dinner is over, and she’s delighted in that bubbly way of hers that makes Derek smile quietly at her as she bounces away from him, and into her room, and he’s alone.

Alone with his thoughts.

Even now, after therapy and Braeden and the distance that only time can give, being alone with his thoughts for too long is rarely good. It’s part of the reason he started woodworking to begin with. When he’s got wood in his hands, under his tools, the scent of it fresh and clean in his nose--he can’t think. He can only be present in that moment, give his attention to that small piece of creation.

Lily grins and calls it his zen and Eric watches him with haunted eyes when Derek emerges from his workshop, dusty with sawdust and tearstained.

Even now, years later, he will come out of his work-trance holding a piece from his past and blink away tears he hadn’t realized were there. A tiny carved flower that reminds him of Erica. A wolf’s paw carved into a nightstand that would fit Laura’s wolf perfectly. A puzzle of interlocked wooden rings that are deceptively strong and unassuming that he stains the color of Boyd’s dark eyes. The shattered spiral staircase on a model lighthouse that he sends to Isaac without a word.

They’re all there, in his work, in the furniture he sells and the things he creates, all these pieces of himself that fit into and make up the life he’s built away from the ashes of them.

It’s easy to sell his pieces, when it’s to strangers. To let them hold fragments of his past and who he’s become, because they don’t know _him_. They don’t know what inspired them, and how he wept creating them, how sometimes he still wakes aching to see his sister, to watch Erica laughing at Boyd, to call Isaac.

They don’t know, but they still love the work, and he wants that. He wants the whole world to see the people he loved and lost and to love them too.

His therapist said it’s a way of letting them live on. Derek doesn’t know how true that is, but it settles some of the hurt in his chest, thinking of them bringing comfort and happiness to strangers who never had the privilege of loving the wonderful family Derek had created and destroyed.

But this--this is different.

This is Stiles.

This is _Stiles_.

Stiles, who always saw too deeply into him, and now, he has this puzzle that lays Derek bare, strips him down and spreads him open for Stiles and his brilliant mind to pick apart and evaluate.

It’s a pulse pounding fear that tastes almost like exhilaration and a new chance, and hope.

It’s terrifying and he is dizzy with anticipation.

He leans against the window and watches wisps of cloud scuttling across the half-moon and lets anticipation buzz in his fingertips as his eyes gleam electric blue.

 

**echoes of her ghost**

 

He lived his entire life in Beacon Hills, had spent more of his life protecting it than he hadn’t and never dreamed of leaving.

He  _loved_ there, the kind of love you don’t get past, the kind of earthshaking, life redefining, once in a lifetime love he was lucky to have, that he longs for and is grateful for in equal measure.

He lived his entire life in Beacon Hills, until his world changed, until Stiles was taken and came back _different,_ shaken, hollowed out.

He lived his entire life in Beacon Hills and the day Stiles sat on the stairs and said,  _I want to leave. I want to leave and I want you to come with me._

He knew that he’d never go back.

Beacon Hills--the supernatural mess that swirled through the Preserve and destroyed so much--it was a black hole that sucked in everything it touched and Stiles wanted to escape it, and he never even hesitated. He put the house on the market, packed everything they owned, left Parrish as interim Sheriff and drove away, with Stiles’ rusty old Jeep rattling behind their Uhaul and they didn’t stop until they hit the East coast.

He’d never regretted it.

He still didn’t regret it. He missed some things--you don’t walk away from everything you’d ever known, the life you’d built--without missing things.

He missed Melissa’s laughter, wry and warm, as they talked on her breaks.

He missed the way the seasons changed, easing from one to the other.

He missed Scott sometimes, the kid who could have been his son, the kid he was absurdly proud of.

He and Melissa had done a good job, with them. Claudia did the groundwork, gave him a solid foundation, and with Melissa’s help, Stiles had grown into a good man.

Sometimes, he wished they could see it, the two women he’d loved, one his beating heart, the other the sister he’d never had.

But the moments came and passed quickly.

Stiles watched him sometimes, like he felt guilty and John knew what it was--that Stiles sometimes regretted asking John to leave with him.

But it had been months since his last panic attack, weeks since the last nightmare, he ran in the woods and had friends, and he smiled, the way John had begun to think Stiles would never smile again. He still carried scars, but Stiles was  _happy._

And that made everything he left behind more than worth losing.

Even Melissa.

But the thing is--some things you can’t outrun.

He would never outrun the ghost of Claudia, the first and only woman he loved, and he thinks that Stiles is the same way--he loves with every fiber of his soul, and there is no second chances.

Lydia was his Melissa, the sister of his soul, and John was grateful that Stiles had her--that even now, he has her.

But she wasn’t the love of Stiles life.

He stares at the puzzle box, the different shades of wood and the way the grain doesn’t quite fit.

The way the dark wood is heavier, more prominent in the box, overshadowing the pale wood that fit around it.

He stares and grins. The dark wood looks strong--stronger than the pale--but it’s an illusion, a clever trick.

Take the softer, weaker wood away, and the strong box crumples, unable to hold itself up.

He huffs a laugh and wonder if Stiles has accepted it, yet.

If he knows that Derek Hale is in love with him.

If he knows that  _he_ is in love with Derek.

The house looks untouched, feels empty and John sighs. Stares at the wooden box.

Not yet. He doesn’t know yet.

The thing about Derek is that he always felt like an inevitable to John. They fit together in a way that no one could deny, worked together and challenged each other--they were like fire and gasoline, explosive and sometimes destructive, and inevitable.

They were always inevitable.

Even when he stood in Davis’ shop and stared at Derek’s triskle, a ghost from a life they’d left behind, it hadn’t felt like an intrusion so much as a piece of their lives--their new lives--that had been missing finally coming home.

He sighs and lets himself out of the house, drives the two blocks to his little house with a smile on his lips and the ghost of his Claudia filling up the cab of his truck.

He hopes that whatever happens, Stiles doesn’t want to run again.

But if he does--John will run with him. Claudia’s ghost will haunt him and Derek’s will haunt Stiles but they’ll be together and Stiles will be safe and John doesn’t ask for anything more than that, anymore.

 

**fragments of life**

 

He’s thought about it.

It’s been six years since he left Beacon Hills and _eight_ since Derek left them--of course he’s thought about it. Those first six months, when things were the quietest they ever got in Beacon Hills, he thought of very little else.

What would he do, if Derek Hale came back.

And then he left. The Wild Hunt took him, took his _father_ and he got the fuck out, and the idea of Derek Hale coming back became this distant nebulous thing, a dream he pulled out every once in a while, a fantasy when he was in museums and coffee shops and saw a muscular stubbly dude.

But it was never him--it was always a discount version, someone pretty but not pretty enough, someone who caught his gaze before it slid right on past, someone who wasn’t _right._

But he was just that. Distant and nebulous--a part of a life Stiles had left behind.

And now--

Now, everything seemed shaky and uncertain under his feet. Beacon Hills and the nightmares seem close enough to touch, real in a way they hadn’t been in not nearly long enough.

The first time Stiles realized he had gone a month without thinking about Scott he drank himself into a blackout and after he recovered from that--and calmed his irate father--Stiles went to a tattoo parlor. It was clean, almost obsessively so, and brightly lit. Sorority girls giggled at the counter, pointed at the flash. Hipsters in too tight jeans and beards watched him as he filled out his paperwork.

His artist was a purple haired girl named Tally and she asked him why he got it.

Stiles laughed until he cried and when she asked him if he liked it, after it was done, the black bands stark against his arm, he shook his head, and said, fondly, “I hate it.”

When he went back six months later, Tally’s pierced eyebrow went up but she didn’t say anything--she didn’t ask any questions and god, he could have kissed her for that--as she inked the familiar triskle onto his wrist.

A wolf’s paw cut through with an arrow decorated his other wrist a few months later and a geometric fox head covered his shoulder by the end of the year.

He didn’t think of them often. Sometimes he went days, weeks--months--without thinking about them, and then he’d look down and register the ink on his skin and he’d remember. Allison and Derek’s puppies. The foxhead grinning at him reminding him of the nightmares and Kira. Derek’s was the only one he _saw,_ touched and thought of regularly.

But then Derek had always been different.

He sat at the table and his father put a cup of coffee near him, near enough he barely need to move to draw it closer, wrap his hands around it to keep from reaching for the puzzle box.

It was simple, really. A light press and a quick twist and the whole thing came apart, like it was never two pieces of a whole. It was just fragments of stained wood, discarded pieces of a life that wasn’t his anymore.

They were like his tattoos, he thought. Fragments of a life that wasn’t his anymore.

But when it was put together.

When they fit together.

It was gorgeous and strong and held a tiny secret. A tentative promise.

The note was unexpected, honestly.

“What are you going to do?” John asks, and Stiles shakes his head.

“I don’t know.”

“Bullshit,” John says and Stiles’ gaze snaps up to meet his father’s gentle blue eyes.

“Dad--”

“Son, you’ve always known what you wanted when it comes to Derek. And if you think it’s not worth the risk--ok. We can ignore this or we can pack up and leave. We can do whatever you think is best. But--Stiles, he left. He got out. He isn’t Beacon Hills, not anymore.” John says gently.

“What if--what if I do this and it happens again?”

“It?”

“All the bad shit, Dad. What if I bring all the bad shit back into his life--fuck, into _your_ life.”

“You didn’t bring the bad shit into anyone’s life. That was the Nematon. And yeah, I know, you helped wake it. But, kid. That wasn’t here. You calling him--it’s not gonna usher in the apocalypse.”

Stiles barks out a laugh, but it’s shaky and wet, and John sighs.

“You know I’ll support whatever you decide, right?”

Stiles nods. Because he does. If there is anything he’s sure of, it’s that John Stilinski will move heaven and hell to support him.

“I don’t want to run again.”

“Then we don’t.” John says, simply.

“I don’t--I miss him,” Stiles confesses, shyly, and John nudges his phone towards him.

“Then tell him that.”

He stands and pauses to press a kiss into Stiles’ hair before he retreats to the room Stiles keeps for him. Absently, Stiles is grateful. He can feel the shadows creeping in, the nightmares waiting in the wings.

Having his dad close will be good.

He picks up the note again. It’s simple and short, so bluntly Derek it makes his lips twitch.

_I miss you._

The phone number was surprising. And it wasn’t.

He punches it in with trembling hands and send the message before he can over think it anymore.

Then he pieces the puzzle box back together and picks up his tiny note, and phone and takes his fragmented pieces of life with him to bed.

 

**living in the past**

 

She had an alpha, once.

A pack, and a mate, and an alpha.

She thinks of them, sometimes. Derek says it’s normal, that when you’ve lost as much as they have, it’s ok to think about them, as long as you aren’t living in the past.

She was, when she first ran through his woods, terrified and alone and feral.

Derek found her, and brought her back to his little log cabin in the woods, and he coaxed her humanity back to the surface, something she hadn’t thought could be done and wasn’t sure she wanted done.

Derek made her live, in the moment.

More than that--he made her _want_ to live in the moment.

She was his first omega and the night the moon hung full and bright over them and she bared her throat and called him her alpha--Derek had stared at her in shock and something like fear and ran from her.

Lily didn’t mind, though. Derek had taught her to live again, taught her what it was, to be a pack, and she was willing to chase him to keep that.

Derek saved her, something she was almost painfully aware of.

It took a long time--years--to realize, they saved each other.

That Derek rescued her from being alone, but she did the same thing, that as much as he sometimes seemed surly and distant, Derek _craved_ companionship.

She forgets, sometimes. They’ve been together, her and Eric and Derek and Saul, for so long that the time before she became part of this strange, disjointed pack feels like it belongs to someone else.

She wakes up and can’t remember a time when she wasn’t this werewolf’s beta in every way that matters.

She forgets that Derek is like her, like them all--that he had a place, a pack, before her.

The thing is--Derek is private. Even in their pack that isn’t, he is intensely private and alone, content to keep his past and his scars to himself.

Saul knew who he was, knew what had happened to the Hale pack all those years ago, and how a new, younger Hale pack rose in California and took apart the Alpha Pack with a True Alpha’s help.

There were whispers about the Hale alpha sacrificing his spark to save one of his pack members.

There were more whispers, about him killing them.

But Derek didn’t talk about it.

He didn’t talk about his family, or his past, or the pack he changed, or the reasons his eyes were blue.

He didn’t talk about the fact that he was the alpha of this pack they’d formed, but that he _wasn’t_ an alpha.

He didn’t talk about the people he left behind.

Sometimes, she sat in his workshop, while he sawed and carved and shaped, and she thought she could see, hidden in the sawdust and stubble, the man he would have been, if life hadn’t happened.

The man he was starting to become, despite life happening.

She loves that man, with the ferocity and devotion of a sister, loved him so much her heart ached with it and she whispered it into Eric’s chest, as he held her, a solid truth she believed---they had the best alpha in the world.

When he came home, silent and withdrawn and they summoned Braeden to pull him back to them--she worried.

But then he went into his shop and when he emerged with a tiny wooden puzzle box, he seemed lighter. Anxious, but less weighted.

She’s heard him talking to Braeden, about someone named Stiles, and she didn’t dig. She refused to dig, even though curiosity ate at her.

Lily watches Derek, as they drive back to Maine, his eyes bright and focused on the road, and she hopes that whoever Stiles is, whatever they decide to do with Derek’s heart--she hopes they don’t hurt him.

He’s been hurt so much already.

“Don’t worry,” he says, gently, picking up on her distress and she makes a low, anxious noise.

He reaches for her then, a quick firm squeeze at the back of her neck that grounds and reassures her as he marks her with his scent. “I just want you to be ok, Derek,” she says, quietly.

He glances at her, startled, and his eyes go warm. “Stiles said that to me, once. Right after I left Beacon Hills. Sent me a text saying he hoped I was ok.” He goes quiet, and then, “It’s the last thing he ever said to me.”

She waits, still and quiet and hopeful that her distant alpha will trust her, that he will let her share this piece of him. Derek smiles, then, a quick flash of teeth. “I promise, Lily. Whatever happens, I’ll be ok.”

And because she always has, she believes him.

 

**promise of the future**

 

When he left Beacon Hills--and the times he let himself dream of finding Stiles--he always imagined that if they found each other, it would be like an earthquake.

A life altering, foundation rattling  _moment_ when everything changed, when they slammed into each other with all the force and fury they’d always had, and it rewrote the world he lived in.

Maybe because Stiles was part of the madness of Beacon Hills and that had always been something to rewrite his world--maybe because it was  _Stiles_ and when Derek was honest with himself--it happened more, now--Stiles has always had the uncanny ability to shake up everything Derek knew, to reshape his world around a sarcastic skinny boy who took up too much space, who meant too much, who  _gave too much._

So he thinks it’s fair, to expect this--this reunion that he had hoped for, dreamt of, but never believed would actually happen--to be like that, be like Beacon Hills and Stiles and earthquakes.

It’s not though.

He thinks, if it was, he’d run.

He’d pack up his little world and run until he was lost again, and stay that way.

There is a part of him that will never be able to resist Stiles--the part of him that made the puzzle box, the part of him that jerks with hope every time his phone buzzes--but he is happy.

He is  _happy_ and his pack is safe, and that  _matters._

There is too much, now, for him to lose to risk on a boy and the earthquakes that trembles his foundation.

No matter how much he might want that.

So it’s normal, he thinks, to be afraid. To feel that like a bruise press against his excitement, against his hope. They exist together, and when he tells Braeden, she hums consideringly and tells him that it makes sense.

That this isn’t a bad thing.

That he is allowed to be careful and protect himself.

She tells him what he already knows, that Stiles would want that from him.

He expected an earthquake, a shattering, unstoppable change.

But Stiles drifts into his life like a breeze, a springtime wind, the quiet breath of promise for a future and the end of a long winter.

He slips into Derek’s life with a quiet invitation and settles there with a text and stays there with emails, long and rambly and talking about his life.

There’s something quietly reserved in the emails, in his texts, in his reticence to call Derek. Like he is as cautious and scared as Derek is, and it makes him ache.

The boy he knew in Beacon Hills was a tsunami, a wild force of nature that could withstand anything the world threw at him.

But not without scars, Derek learns.

Stiles is different now. He’s quiet. He isn’t the wild storm raging--he’s a mountain carved from stone, battered and standing strong, but quiet. Remote.

It breaks Derek’s heart, and settles him.

Because he left Beacon Hills for a reason, as much as he longed to go back, sometimes, to find Stiles--that place, that life, that  _Stiles_ \--didn’t fit him.

It would never fit him.

But he thinks, this one. The one who talks about his job at a software firm and books and weekends gardening with his Dad--he thinks this is someone who could fit into his world.

Sometimes, Stiles will bombard him with texts, a momentary burst of manic energy, usually summoned by a new movie or enraging article, most often by a new book.

But it was never the kind of manic desperation that marked high school and the constant almost dying.

It was...gentle.

They talked about life. About nothing. About everything.

Derek told him, after over a month of texts and emails, about the years right after he left Beacon Hills. He talks about his pack of omegas and the way he fell into carpentry, how it went from something his therapist suggested to a way to meditate and grieve and remember.

Stiles skirts his reason for leaving, and won’t talk about Scott at all--that wound is still too new, too raw. But he talks about Allison, and the nogitsune. He talks about his mom and how his dad is happy, and less lonely here, how they both feel less haunted and how it makes him feel guilty, sometimes.

He talks about the future, like he has one.

He talks about it like Derek will be there, to see it.

Stiles twists himself into Derek’s life without ever seeing him, in a hundred emails and a thousand text messages, the way spring twists its way into the world with a gentle, barely felt breeze.

Derek wakes up one day and watches a robin outside his window and thinks of Stiles and the future and it doesn’t feel like a bruise anymore.

It only feels like a promise.

 

 

**rain in the forest**

 

He feels restless.

Anxious, too big for his skin, a feeling he hasn’t had much of since they left Beacon Hills.

But it’s not a bad restless. Not the kind that makes him jump at loud noises, and wait impatiently for the other shoe to drop.

This--it feels like the night before a road trip or school starting. When everything is wide open and hopeful and everything in him is reaching for that moment that isn’t quite there yet.

 

_ >> i stopped by the shop. New pieces came in. That sleigh bed, dude. It’s gorgeous. They’re good work. _

_ << thanks. Lily brought them down. I know--I’m sorry. _

_ >> Don’t. We already agreed that slow is good. I’m not upset. _

 

He runs a lot. Sometimes John joins him, jogging an endless loop through the woods behind his house.

More often he runs alone, and it’s not bad. It means he can think.

 

_ << did you go to college? _

_ << where is lydia. _

_ >> yeah. I got into George Washington and thought about the FBI for a minute--but it didn’t seem right. Not for me now, you know? Felt like that was part of me that I outgrew. idk, maybe that doesn’t make sense. _

_ >> she’s in NYC. Works on Wall Street. Last I heard she was making her clients millions and on track to be named partner in her firm before she’s thirty. _

 

He wants more, is the thing.

And that terrifies him.

What _more_ could be, terrifies him.

He runs and the summer thunderstorms gather over him, dark and forbidding and strangely comforting.

 

_ >> do you still have nightmares? _

_ << yeah _

_ >> me too. _

 

He has his first panic attack after they’ve been texting and emailing, doing this slow dance toward each other for two months.

Derek calls, his name flashing bright and insistence on his phone screen and it threw him into a panic attack so quick and hard he actually blacked out.

He came to with four missed calls, a string of increasingly worried texts, and his Dad’s face set in a familiar expression of worry and fear that he hasn’t seen much in the years since they left Beacon Hills.

“I’m ok.”

“Are you?” John asks. It’s the first time, the only time, he questions this thing they’re doing, and Stiles shivers under that question, under the weight of his concern.

“I’m ok,” he insists, and texts the same to Derek.

 

 _To_ [ _d.hale.wolf@gmail.com_ ](mailto:d.hale.wolf@gmail.com)

_From:_ [ _SStilinski24@gmail.com_ ](mailto:SStilinski24@gmail.com)

_Subject:_

 

_I found a book the other day. Dad laughs at me because when I’m just trying to relax, I read a lot of scifi and YA. Ridiculous, right? My therapist said it was me trying to recreate my teen years, into something that didn’t kill me or try to. That reading books about teenagers made being one safe, again._

_I think that’s probably true. But it’s damn good books, too._

_S-_

 

 _To:_ [ _d.hale.wolf@gmail.com_ ](mailto:d.hale.wolf@gmail.com)

_From:_ [ _SStilinski24@gmail.com_ ](mailto:SStilinski24@gmail.com)

_Subject: RE_

_Illuminae. Read it._

 

The problem was--he felt like he was on the outskirts of Derek’s life. A part of it. He knew about the ‘wolf’s food choices and exercise regime and what he was reading and his nightmares and dreams and his sisters’ and parents, had a hundred pictures on his phone and in his inbox of Derek’s cabin, of his workshop, of the trees where he ran and the moon and stars and sunsets.

Derek was twisting into his life, a sweet subtle presence that he didn’t want to resist. But then--

There were the days when Derek went dark and moody, when he was quiet and sullen. There were things that Derek refused to talk about--about Braeden and his pack of omegas, about the leather trio.

He was protective, always, of the people he loved and the grief he still carried and Stiles--

Stiles understood it.

He still wanted to be let into Derek’s world. He wanted to meet the pack Derek had built, and hug Braeden and hold him when he shook from memories.

 

 _To:_ [ _SStilinski24@gmail.com_ ](mailto:SStilinski24@gmail.com)

_From:_ [ _D.hale.wolf@gmail.com_ ](mailto:D.hale.wolf@gmail.com)

_Subject: regrets_

 

_I didn’t want to leave you._

_I had to leave, but I never wanted to leave_ you.

 

He runs.

He runs because it itches under his skin, a want he can’t have, a fear he can’t put to rest, a feeling of teetering on the precipice, tipping into more.

He runs because he can’t stay still, can’t keep his energy in control, can’t keep his breathing even when he reads Derek’s emails and texts and hesitant promises.

He runs because it’s been months of waiting and talking and they are both still waiting, waiting, _waiting._

He feels like a storm, ready to break, and it makes his breath catch as he runs, because he doesn’t know if he’s ready for that, just knows how much he _wants._

He runs and the rain begins to fall in the woods.

 

**hold me through my nightmares**

 

He wakes to the sound of wind whistling past his window and the call of owls in the forest. He wakes to the sound of his phone buzzing and the rustle of bedsheets and his heartbeat tripping.

He wakes confused and fumbles to answer, panic gripping him the way it always done when he’s yanked out of sleep like this, a leftover from the years with Laura and in Beacon Hills.

“Derek,” Stiles whimpers, and he jerks upright, reaching for his jeans.

“What’s wrong?”

He makes a shuddery noise, something like a sob, and Derek closes his eyes.

They haven’t called much. It’s been months of texts and emails sprinkled through with phone calls that always stick with him for too long, feel too heavy, matter _too much._

But this.

He has John, two blocks and a quick phone call away, ready and willing to show up at his son’s house to sooth away the nightmares.

And he called Derek, four hundred miles away and _useless_.

The itch to leave, to find him, to pull him close and snarl away everything that could hurt him burns in his blood like the change, and he shivers.

“Breathe, Stiles, c’mon. Breath for me,” he murmurs as Stiles gasps for breath and sobs.

“I can’t,” he pants. “I _can’t.”_

His heartbeat is all over the place, fast enough that Derek feels a pang of worry. Stiles is gasping and Derek snarls, “ _Stiles, breathe.”_

There’s enough alpha in his voice, enough a remnant of his old life that it works, and Stiles drags in a sharp breath.

“There, you’re ok,” Derek murmurs, slipping back into the soothing murmur. “Just breath, sweetheart.”

Stiles hiccups out a sob, but he does as he’s told, breathes until his heartbeat evens out and is steady, breaths until it’s slow and even and deep. Until Derek thinks, he’s slipping off to sleep.

“I’m sorry,” he rasps out and Derek huffs.

“We said we wouldn’t do that. No apologizing for the scars.”

It was Stiles idea. They both came with so much damage, it seemed like more than just a good idea--it seemed like triage. Acceptance seemed like the only way for this new thing to survive the baggage both of them carried.

“Want to talk about it?”

“No,” Stiles whispers, and Derek hums.

“What can I do?”

There’s a long moment of silence and then, “I wish--”

Derek waits, patient.

“I wish I wasn’t so scared,” Stiles says in a rush. “I wish I could just--let go. I’m so afraid that I’ll fuck this up, fuck _you_ up, and I can’t do that, I _won’t do that.”_

His heart is pounding and his mouth is dry. Because--

“You said you didn’t want to see each other.”

There’s a long moment of silence and then, “We left because the Wild Hunt took me. They took me and my Dad forgot me, and I should have died. We _all_ should have died. Fucking--they took the entire town, Derek.”

He takes a shuddery breath and Stiles pushes on. “And it was our fault. Mine and Scott’s and Allison's. Because we fucked with the Nematon and we dragged open that door and the Hunt rode right through it. I ran because it wasn’t gonna stop. It was never going to stop.”

“Stiles,” Derek says, softly and he laughs, this high hysterical noise that hurts him to hear it.

“It’s me, Der. Don’t you get it. I’m the one still standing, all that darkness is on _me,”_ he sobs, “and I don’t want that near you.”

“Stiles--” Derek starts, “That’s--it doesn’t work like that. You _know_ it doesn’t. You and your dad have been fine since you left Beacon Hills.”

His silence is heavy and stubborn and Derek huffs. “Do I get a say in this at all?”

“Yes,” Stiles whispers. “When I’m not fucked up by nightmares, of course you do.”

Derek smiles and says, “Then ask me tomorrow night, what I wants.”

Stiles is quiet for a long time, and Derek feels his heartbeat slowing, settling to match Stiles, until the younger man is asleep.

Then he stands and sends John a quick text.

 

_ >> he had a nightmare. Take care of him tomorrow. _

 

He smiles and dresses, because he won’t be sleeping anymore tonight.

When his phone rings the next night, the sky is dark, and he can’t hear the wind or the owls, just his blood rushing in his ears, a roar that drowns out everything but a familiar heartbeat.

He smiles at it, at Stiles’ name illuminating it, and stares up at the dark, new moon night from Stiles’ roof, when he answers.

  


**shadow of the new moon**

 

The house is quiet.

He’d felt off all day, impatient for something he didn’t really know how to name. His dad stayed for a while, his gaze warm and worried and Stiles huffed. “Did he call you?”

“Text. He was worried,” John said easily, like Derek talking to him about Stiles was normal.

It was. It had become normal, over the months. It made Derek happy to be able to reach out to someone else in Stiles life, someone he knew would take care of Stiles, even when Stiles forgot to.

“I’m fine.”

“I know,” John said and went back to making dinner before he wandered home with a wave, and Stiles watched as he did.

The house is quiet without him, even with Stiles low murmured stream of thoughts as he cleans the kitchen and putters around on his computer for a bit.

The roof creaks and he pauses, his hands still on the keyboard, and glances up.

_Ask me tomorrow night, what I want._

He licks his lips and crawls into bed with a book, not ready for that.

Too ready for that.

They’ve been circling this--each other--for months now, and even afraid, Stiles knows what he wants.

He wants Derek.

He’s always wanted Derek.

Not just the ghost of him in texts and puzzles and emails that made him ache--he wants _Derek._

Here. Holding him. Smiling and shy, in his bedroom, the moon new and dark in the sky, and Derek as close to human as he ever got.

He wants _Derek_.

As terrifying as that is, as uncertain as he is, as much as he worries about what that could mean for him and his dad, about how life will work for them with the distance--he still wants Derek.

He sprawls across his bed, on his stomach, the book open in front of him and stares at it sightlessly.

His mother and father--he knows their stories. About the way they fought when they first met, antagonism slowly giving way to reluctant friendship that deepened into love. He knows that Claudia left, went to Poland to care for her sick grandfather, that neither of them expected to find each other--and then they did. Two years later and in a new place, three hours from the coastal town where they had grown up and fallen for each other, they found each other again.

Inevitable, his mom used to say, smiling at John like he was her whole world. Loving John was inevitable.

Stiles didn’t understand it, then. He didn’t even understand it when he was in high school and watching Derek leave with Braeden.

But he gets it now.

Derek has always been the inevitable for him, but still the one thing he chooses, over and over, deliberately, even when he chose to run from everything supernatural.

He’d never hesitated, never even considered not reaching out to Derek, when he saw that triskele logo in Davis’ furniture shop, so many months ago.

He dials the phone and it rings, his heart pounding harder with every unanswered ring. And then it kicks him over to voicemail and Stiles stares at it.

They haven’t talked today. No texts or emails or pictures, nothing at all. Just the quiet, _call me tomorrow._

So maybe--maybe he was wrong. Maybe Derek changed his mind. Maybe--

The window squeaks, something he’s never bothered fixing because it’s reassuring, knowing it makes noises, knowing no one can sneak into his room without that paltry warning.

It squeaks and his racing heart settles as he smiles and stands up.

Derek looks--

Older. There’s a shock of gray in his beard, and new lines around his eyes that makes Stiles wonder what caused them. There’s a softness to him that he never had before, and tiny white scars on his hands, and a smile, oh god, a _smile_ on his lips.

“Stiles,” he murmurs, and Stiles makes a noise, a broken sob, and steps forward.

And Derek catches him midstep, pulls him in, holds him impossibly close, his head dipped down to press into Stiles shoulder, and he’s _shaking_ , Derek is _shaking._

 _“Shh,”_ Stiles murmurs. “Shh, it’s ok. I’ve got you. You’re ok.”

Derek whines and Stiles lifts his head up with a coaxing noise, until familiar pale eyes meet his and he smiles.

It’s easy, leaning in, kissing Derek softly, a barely there brush of lips that makes Derek sigh softly,makes him shift to frame Stiles face with his big hands, and murmur his name soundlessly between them.

It’s easy, to lean forward and catch that silent plea with his lips, to lick into Derek’s mouth and fit together, like a puzzle piece.

Like a lock opening a door.

It’s easy and, Stiles realizes, as Derek holds him impossibly close and the wind rustles his curtains and the new moon broods overhead--this was always inevitable.

 

**human in your arms**

 

He was a born wolf and, growing up, his control was the best in his family. Laura spent two years worth of full moons chained in the basement, and Cora had such a hard time keeping a grip on her temper she couldn’t even go to school.

There were a few months, after the fire when everything still tasted like death and ash still clung to his nose, that it was hard and Laura kept them in the wilds, camping in the woods of the Rockies where no one bothered them and he could shift and rage for days at a time.

But that was years ago. Since he left Beacon Hills, it had been--easier. His anchor felt distant but steady, and he was easy in his skin.

His therapist said that it was part of his healing, that being comfortable with himself was a sign he _was_ healing.

So there’s a panicked moment, when he’s on his back and Stiles dips down to kiss him, that the shift burns up through him, and he thinks he’s slipping.

Then Stiles rolls his hips, this deep dirty grind, moaning as he fucks down on Derek’s cock and he thinks it’s not his control slipping, it’s just _Stiles._

Stiles kisses him, a sloppy wet press of his mouth as he pants and squirms and Derek wraps an arm around him, holding him close as he braces his feet against the bed and thrusts up hard into him.

Stiles is shaking as he rides him, head tipped back, his body a long stretched out line of skin and muscle and scars. Derek doesn’t know these scars, doesn’t recognize the way the muscles are filling out into a body he only remembers as a boy, doesn’t recognize the calm quiet in Stiles’ movements, the confidence in him.

It’s been there since Derek stepped into the room, from the moment Stiles kissed him, was there in the way he drew Derek to his bed, was there in the small smile he wore when he worked himself open after he sucked Derek off, grinning up at Derek through the quiet moans he couldn’t bite back.

He didn’t recognize so much of this boy that he loves, but he recognizes the scent, the quiet steady notes of soap and sweat and citrus that Stiles has always carried, the sharp tang of chemicals that cuts through it all. He recognizes the long fingered, strong hands that frame his face as Stiles rides him, holding his face like he’s precious as he kisses Derek soft and deep and sweet and dirty.

“I missed you,” Derek whispers, as his orgasm builds and builds, drawn up too quickly by the roll of Stiles hips and the hitch of his breath, by the flush in his cheeks pour down his strong throat and chest, by the tight heat of him around Derek’s cock.

“I _missed_ you,” Derek whispers, and Stiles whimpers, leaning down to kiss him.

“I--Derek, it’s too much,” he almost sobs, and Derek holds him, the shift fading away because Stiles is shaking apart, his body trembling and tense, shattered little pants in his ear, a near constant whine in his throat.

“Its ok,” he whispers, and Stiles shakes. He’s barely moving now, Derek holding him still and fucking him with tiny thrusts of his hips, and he’s holding on too tight, but his hands are all human and his eyes don’t gleam as he presses his lips to Stiles skin, mouthing at the vein pulsing just under his thin skin. “I’ve got you, sweetheart, it’s ok.”

Stiles gasps his name and Derek bites him with blunt human teeth, groaning as Stiles shudders and shakes through his orgasm. His slams into him, hard enough that his shift burns over him and he tilts his head back, teeth away from Stiles and _howls,_ pleasure whiting out everything for just a moment.

Stiles is collapsed against his chest when he can breath again, one claw tipped hand cradled near his face.

“Be careful,” Derek slurs around his fangs, voice hoarse. “Don’t wanna hurt you.”

Stiles smiles at him, and it’s gentle but confidant, and _that_ he recognizes, as familiar as the moon and the sun and it makes him ache.

Stiles gently kisses each clawed finger, and when he leans up, licks over Derek’s fangs, until Derek whines and drags him down into a deep messy kiss that has them both panting and his cock twitching with lazy interest.

“You couldn’t hurt me, Der,” Stiles says, and curls up under his arm, happy and sleepy and sated.

Derek blinks back tears and the shift melts away and he sighs, holding Stiles close as they fall asleep.

 

**laughter at dawn**

 

Stiles laughed when he was a little boy. It was something that filled up their home, this bright infectious laughter that played so well with Claudia’s and never failed to bring a smile to John’s lips.

No matter how ugly the world was, no matter what he saw at work, when he went home, he was greeted with full body laughter and his son’s big smiles and Claudia’s grin, quietly amused.

He was a happy boy, exuberant to the point of exhaustion, constantly getting into trouble with Scott, and John thought--

He had the foolish thought that it would never change. That Stiles would always be almost defiantly alive and happy. That he would be almost _daring_ the world to shatter his world.

Except.

The world did.

Claudia got sick, and for a while, Stiles didn’t know. He was still bright laughter, so wild and alive that it was painful, compared to her. And even that, slowly, dimmed. Stiles dimmed. A bright loud light going still and dark.

It broke something in John, to see that. As much as Claudia dying shattered him in ways he’d never recover from, the house empty of Stiles' laughter did the same.

After she died, he drank sometimes, just so he couldn’t hear the silence where his wife and son used to be.

It was a gradual thing, after her death, Stiles laughing again. But it began to happen. They had each other, if not Claudia, and they both knew that it wasn’t _enough_ but it was better than nothing. They clung to each other in a way he sometimes thought was unhealthy--but Stiles gradually came back to life. And sometimes. Not often. But sometimes--he came home to a loud house filled with laughter.

And then the shit storm of supernatural and werewolf shenanigans slammed into them and Stiles wasn’t laughing, he wasn’t smiling, he was the quiet walking wounded that Claudia was near the end.

Even after they left Beacon Hills and time and distance made the pain dull and manageable--it was still quiet when he entered Stiles’ house. It was like the house was haunted, still, by the ghosts and scars Stiles carried.

But in the months after he finds Derek Hale at his son’s breakfast table, Stiles’ skin red from beard burn and littered with love bites--he hears laughter.

Stiles is _happy_ in a way he hasn’t seen since Claudia was alive. Even when Derek returns--reluctantly--to his pack in Maine, Stiles smiles. He laughs at his phone and giggles when he hides behind doors that are too thin, talking to Derek.

John didn’t realize how much he missed that, how much he had grieved its loss, until it’s back, the noise of it filling up a silent house.

He lets himself into the house on a Sunday morning a few months after Derek appeared in Stiles’ living room--John has his reservations about that story that Stiles told him but he wasn’t going to point out that Derek only ever appeared in Stiles’ bedroom--and hums quietly to himself as he sets about making the turkey bacon that he complains about far more than he actually dislikes.

He can hear voices upstairs and smiles. He didn’t realize Derek was coming to town today.

Once upon a time, Derek appearing without warning wouldn’t string a smile across his lips--it would only cause panic and worry and a bloody fight before whatever problem that had followed him into their lives was dealt with.

Now--

Now he hummed and started chopping vegetables for the omlet and listened to his son laughing with the man he loved.

It wasn’t perfect, this thing they were doing--Stiles hated the distance and there were still moments when both retreated, fighting their demons and each other.

But.

Stiles was laughing. Derek Hale had made his son’s laughter fill their life again.

And _that_ was perfect.

 

**colliding in the twilight**

 

Her heart is pounding, the rapid pulse like drum beating and Eric leans into her side.

From the woodshop comes the sound of Derek’s sander, and she feels a burst of pure agitation.

He’ll emerge moments before it’s time, covered in dust and sweat and those dirty clothes she dislikes so much.

She knows--she _knows_ \--it doesn’t matter. That Stiles has seen worse than a dirty Derek. She doesn’t know what they lived through together, but she knows that since Stiles slipped back into Derek’s life--her alpha has been _happy_. She tried to explain it to Eric, one night, after they fucked and he was lying drowsy by her side.

It wasn’t anything definable though. It was there in the way he slept, a deeper, restful sleep that she thinks he hasn’t had in years. It’s there in the whistle that sometimes drifts from the woodshop, and the sound of Derek laughing in the cabin, when the pack finds him on the phone with Stiles. It’s there in the way he _wants_ to leave the cabin and their shakey territory.

It’s there in the way the shadows that cling to him seem to have grown weaker, loosened their stranglehold.

Even his work has changed. The pieces have always been lovely in a way she doesn’t know how to describe, but before it was a heavy kind of beauty, something indefinitely sad about the pieces he held out to them.

Now--now they’re light. They’re still beautiful, but they’re _different_. They’re warm and almost hopeful.

When she tells Derek, shy and smiling that she and Eric are having a baby, he stares at her with wide, hopeful eyes and pulled her close to scent her and hug her and whisper hoarsely, “Nothing will hurt it. Not ever, Lily. Nothing will hurt your cub.”

She whined and hugged him tighter and felt settled in a way that only her alpha could ever make her feel.

He gave her the crib and matching bassinet two months later, and blushed while she cried and Eric stood, bashful and protective at her shoulder.

Their strange pack was growing and the closer she got to her due date, the more stubborn Derek got about leaving their lands.

It’s why Stiles was coming here.

“What if he doesn’t like us?” she asks, abruptly, twisting to look at Eric and Saul.

“He’ll like you,” Saul says, confidently.

He wasn’t always confident. That was something he learned here, with Derek, something the older wolf coaxed out of him with long patience and quiet encouragement, until the shy reserve in the dark skinned wolf faded away and a confidant man emerged, one that was wickedly funny and mischievous and _smart_.

She leans into her packmate and says, plaintive, “But what if he _does?”_

Stiles was important to Derek. He was the only piece of a life that Derek ran from that he wanted to keep. He _mattered_ and what if he didn’t like them? What if he got here and hated the life Derek had built with them, and Derek left them?

“Stiles will love you,” Derek says, and she blinks. She’s right--he’s dusty and sweaty and smiling, and she stares at him.

A truck pulls into the yard behind him, and his gaze stays on her as Saul and Eric straighten. He’s smiling, soft and steady, and she settles, the tight feeling in her chest easing. “He’ll love you--he already does.”

“Why?” she whispers.

“Because you love me,” he answers, simply.

The truck comes to a stop, and the three omegas that call Derek alpha turn to watch.

The passenger is an older man, with squinted eyes and a kind smile. He holds himself like he’s spent years in military service, like a cop, but there’s a lightness to him that makes her want to relax near him, curled up and content.

He feels comfortable, like home.

The man who climbs out of the passenger seat--

She stills.

He’s handsome, in away that isn’t immediately obvious, pale and lanky, with dark messy hair and moles scattered across his skin. His bright eyes dart past the wolves, some of the tension in his shoulders easing when he sees Derek and then--

Oh.

He smiles, and she understands it. She understands _why_ this boy, pretty and pale and unextraordinary, pulls Derek like the moon pulls the tides.

He looks at Derek like he’s the sun. Like Derek is everything he wants, everything he lives for. It’s a devotion so breathtaking and vulnerable she looks away, feeling like she’s intruding. And then--

“You’re Lily!”

Her gaze jerks up and Stiles’ grin is different, but blinding, and he bounds up to her. Derek doesn’t move to stop him, doesn’t react at all, aside from waving at the man still ambling up to them. Saul and Eric tense, a little, and she has a moment to feel a flare of panic, before Stiles hugs her.

Like she’s someone he knows, someone he’s missed, someone he _cares about._

And she doesn’t understand _why_.

He pulls back and his eyes are bright--beta bright--and warm, “God, I am so glad we finally get to meet.”

She gapes at him, and he reaches down--hesitates a moment. “Do you mind?”

Eric shifts, and Stiles gaze darts to him before it settles back on her. Waiting. “No, its--it’s fine.”

His large hand brushes, almost reverently, over her tight, distended belly, and his expression goes soft and wonderous. “Sweet baby,” he murmurs. “You have no idea how loved you are.”

She feels like the world is tilting, like it’s slamming into something hard and impossible to escape.  

“I brought you things!” he grins, suddenly and Derek huffs.

“Stiles,” he sighs.

“It was Dad’s fault,” he says easily, a wide grin on his face as he lies through his teeth. John snorts and gives her a warm smile before he climbs the steps to the cabin and hugs Derek.

“Sorry we’re late, son.”

“It’s Dad’s fault,” Stiles shouts again, and then curses as something falls out of the truck. Saul jerks forward, almost involuntarily, to help him and Eric is only a step behind. Derek wraps an arm around her shoulders and she blinks up at him, confused and hopeful and off balance.

“What--I don’t understand.”

“I told you he’d like you,” he says, grinning down at her. She blinks and Derek squeezes the nape of her neck, gently. “Lily, you’re my pack. You’re _mine_ and you’ve taken care of me, for years. Stiles couldn’t dislike you if he tried.”

She stares at them--her pack and the man their alpha loves, and feels it again, that sense of being slammed into something.

His past and present, she thinks. Slamming into each other, and--Stiles bounds up to her with a plush wolf and a hint of nerves in his scent, and gaze, and she finally relaxes.

Their past and their present, she thinks, smiling at Stiles, finally colliding. She thinks they always would. Watching Stiles greet Derek with a grin and a murmur too low for her to pick out--maybe they always would. Maybe it was chance and luck--maybe it didn’t matter.

They were each other’s future.

 

**happy here with you**

 

They talk about a lot of things.

About the past and their fears.

About movies and books.

About Stiles’ father and Derek’s pack.

They talk about work and philosophy, about their dead and the demons and their scars.

They talk, when they’re together and when they’re apart, a steady stream of conversation that fills up the empty spaces and leaves comfortable companionship in the silences, and settles both of them.

After he left Beacon Hills, he thought his words dried up.

He didn’t talk to strangers much, and when he did talk to people, it was careful. It was measured, never the incessant babble that had marked his entire life.

Life had been like that for six years--careful words, guarded conversations, quiet listening.

And then Derek fell through his bedroom window and it was--

It was like waking up after a long nap, drowsy and slow and invigorating.

He hadn’t realized how lonely he was until Derek was there, to keep him company.

He hadn’t realized how quiet life was, until Derek brought noise into his life.

Derek. Still the worst at using his words, and still able to understand Stiles, still able to speak almost effortlessly, sometimes wordlessly.

How--the question he wondered most-- _how_  had they gone so long without each other?

They talked about everything--except the future.

It made him nervous.

Because Derek had a life. And the first time he went to Maine, met the pack of omegas who he cared for and led, met _Lily,_ he knew he could never expect Derek to leave Maine, the little life that he’d built, new that he’d never _want_ to ask.

He didn’t know what that meant, though.

He didn’t know how to fit their worlds, hundreds of miles apart, back together.

But as months slid past and words filled up between them, he knew that they needed to. He knew that together is what they both wanted and needed.

Even with the history unmapped, he _knew._

His dad told him he was thinking of selling the house, and Stiles blinked at him, and then nodded.

He looked for jobs.

He looked for a place to live.

But he didn’t talk to Derek about it because even now--a year after they finally crawled into bed together--even now he was determined to be careful.

To give them both the space they needed.

But when he’s here, wrapped up in Derek’s world, he never wants to leave. He wants to say fuck it, fuck space, fuck slow--he wants _this._

He wants this forever.

“Are you happy,” Derek asks, abruptly, and Stiles blinks, looks up from his tablet. He’s been staring at it without really seeing what he’s looking at, and Derek is pressed against his side, a warm line of skin and scruff and bright shining eyes.

And worry. He’s biting his lip, peering at Stiles, worried.

“Yes,” he says, his voice thick with conviction and sincerity.

“You--sometimes, you smell sad.”

Stiles carefully lowers his tablet and sits up, crossing his legs as he faces his lover. Derek doesn’t look away and it hits him like it always does--startling and humbling.

Derek would have looked away, before.

But Derek would never have started this conversation, before.

“I am sad, sometimes,” he admits. “We both are. I think, we both always will carry sadness, Derek. You have your family and I have mine, and even though it doesn’t hurt the way it _did_ \--it’s never going to go away.”

“You learn to live with your grief,” Derek mumbles, and Stiles nods. Pets a hand through thick dark hair.

“But I’m happy here,” he says, and Derek looks away.

Stiles tugs on his hair, until pale green eyes snap up to meet his. “I am _happy,”_ Stiles says, fiercely, “With _you._ Here, with you. Don’t ever think I’m not.”

“But--” Derek hesitates, and says, in a rush, “I don’t want to leave here. I can’t leave the pack, I can’t leave Alina.”

Stiles nods, and smiles, and says. “We’ll figure it out.”

“ _How,”_ Derek demands, plaintive. All of it is there, all of the things they don’t talk about, the looming future they’ve avoided looking at,like a child who still believed if they didn’t see the monster, the monster wouldn’t see them.

“Dad is selling his house. And mine--I’ve talked to a realtor about putting it up for rent. There’s an agency that would handle it, deposit the money in my account. It wouldn’t be hard.”

Derek is still, staring at him with cautious, hopeful eyes and Stiles huffs, leaning down to kiss him.

“Trust me,” Stiles murmurs and Derek sighs, happily.

“Always.”

 

**our future in wood grain**

 

When John flies to California, and Stiles has a panic attack.

He waits until his father drives away, Lily dropping him off at the airport, his breath going shorter and shorter as they go, and then he quietly goes to pieces.

It’s not the first time Derek’s seen Stiles unravel. He’s held Stiles, through his nightmares, and they’ve fought, when Stiles mood turns dark without provocation and he lashes out with a fury and savagery that startles Derek.

He holds Stiles, a hand pressed to his chest, his voice a steady murmur. He doesn’t tell Stiles that it’s ridiculous to be this afraid. That John is only going for a weekend, just long enough to watch Melissa marry Chris--that he isn’t even going back to Beacon Hills.

He doesn’t say any of that, just holds Stiles until he goes limp, his breathing ragged and slowing, the worst storm of fear passing.

“Want to go to bed?” he asks, and Stiles nods against his chest. Derek scoops him up and carries him to their bed, settling the younger man in front of him with a soft sigh. Stiles presses back against him and huffs, “Sorry, baby.”

“Don’t apologize,” Derek whispers, pressing a kiss into his skin.

“I’m a mess. You don’t deserve a mess.”

Derek huffs. “I’m not exactly a model for healthy and happy, Stiles. We both have baggage. We knew that.”

Stiles twists to peer up at him. He does this sometimes, just watches Derek, like he’s looking for something.

It’s been six months since Stiles moved in, since John got a house in the village down the road and settled into a quiet life here. John worked with Chris, consulting on security jobs. Stiles worked remotely for a while, but he spent most of his time writing.

“I think it’s good for me,” he had said, the first time he gave Derek his manuscript. “I think it’s helping.”

Derek had hidden in the woods while he read it, tucked up under a tree, his heart pounding. It _hurt_. Ripped open wounds he hadn’t realized were still there, still festering.

Reading about _them_ , about everything they had lived through--it helped.

It helped them both.

He knows that it’s not perfect. He’s known that for longer than Stiles has been here, that it wasn’t going to ever be _perfect_.

But it’s all he wants.

This. Stiles telling stories and shaking apart in his arms. He wants to be the one holding Stiles together, weather he’s panting in fear and shuddering with lust.

After he read the manuscript, he kissed Stiles and told him that it was perfect--and then he locked himself in the woodshop.

It was the simplest thing he’d ever made, and it took him eighteen tries before he got it right, before he was satisfied with it.

He knew it wasn’t practical. And there was a piece of him, a piece that remains from the years he spent in Beacon Hills, when he was a broken, angry boy, that says he can’t have this. That he can’t _keep_ Stiles.

He keeps waiting. For that perfect moment. When Stiles is happy and present and the shadows aren’t in his eyes. When he doesn’t feel weighed down by his past, by the dead. When the pack is away and Alina doesn’t have a cold, when John is happy and nothing is distracting him or Stiles. He’s waiting for a perfect moment, and he’s been waiting now, for months.

And it’s stupid.

He _knows_ it’s stupid.

“It’s never going to be perfect,” he murmurs now, and Stiles blinks. He’s still watching Derek, that steady intense stare that makes him seem _seen._

“But it’s still good,” Stiles says, and Derek smiles. He pulls away, rolling off the bed and digging in his drawer before he comes back to Stiles, and presses the little pouch in his hand before sitting cross legged on the bed next to him. Stiles watches him for a moment longer, before he tugs gently on the drawstrings holding it closed and tips it into his palm.

The ring is simple. A thin band, polished and stained, a pale brown speckled with dark. It smells, faintly, of chemicals and beechwood. And he isn’t expecting it, the way his hands shake, seeing it cradled in Stiles palm like an offering.

“We’re never going to be perfect,” Derek murmurs, and Stiles blinks at him, tears shining in his eyes, “but I don’t want anything but flawed and good with you.”

Stiles’ smile is blinding, and when he kisses Derek, holding his face and rubbing his thumb against Derek’s jaw, the ring presses, smooth and steady, against his skin, warm already from Stiles’ finger.

It feels like a promise.

Like the last piece of their puzzle, fitting into place.

It feels like something found, finally, something he didn’t realize he was looking forward, didn’t realize he missed, until he felt it, felt Stiles, pressed against him.

It feels like the future. _Their_ future.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on [Tumblr](http://areiton.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> [Stiles' Ring](https://www.harestree.com/product/wooden-ring-beech/)


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